Panel Headed by CIA Nominee Was Singled Out in 9/11 Report

WASHINGTON —  The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, headed by Rep. Porter J. Goss, held fewer hearings on terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks than other congressional panels concerned with the issue, according to an examination by the commission investigating the strikes.

The finding raises questions about the level of attention that terrorism received from the committee under the leadership of the Florida Republican, whom President Bush nominated Tuesday as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In a section of its final report that is critical of Congress, the Sept. 11 commission singled out Goss’ committee, saying it held “perhaps two” hearings on the issue from January 1998 up until the attacks.

By contrast, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held eight hearings on the subject during that period. The Senate and House armed services committees each held nine hearings on terrorism from 1998 to 2001, while the foreign relations panels in both chambers each held four.

A spokesman for the House Intelligence Committee defended Goss, saying the Sept. 11 commission’s findings were misleading because they did not take into account times when terrorism came up during hearings on other matters. The spokesman also noted that in 2001, before the attacks, the committee created a working group that held several meetings on the topic.

“I think [Goss] was definitely focused on the issue of terrorism,” the spokesman said on condition of anonymity. “I think the committee was pretty well abreast of the situation.”

But the committee’s record and the implicit criticism in the Sept. 11 commission report are likely to be seized upon by Democrats, who have indicated that they will challenge Goss on a range of issues during confirmation hearings, expected to begin next month.

Goss, a onetime CIA operative, has served as chairman of the House intelligence panel since 1997. His stewardship has been questioned by critics who say he did little to tackle intelligence problems that have plagued the nation’s spy agencies and contributed to failures in recent years.

Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, the committee’s top Democrat, raised the issue during a hearing Wednesday, complaining that the Republican-controlled panel had failed to implement meaningful reforms in the nearly three years since the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Three years is ample time for Congress to act, and the time to act is now,” Harman said.

Her comments came during a session that focused on reform proposals from the Sept. 11 commission. Among them is a recommendation to create a new national intelligence director who would outrank the CIA chief and oversee all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies, including those now controlled by the Pentagon.

The commission’s final report included a blistering critique of Congress that called its oversight of the intelligence community “dysfunctional.”

At a time when intelligence agencies were expressing increasing alarm about terrorism, “the overall level of attention in the Congress to the terrorist threat was low,” the report said. Neither the House Intelligence Committee nor its Senate counterpart raised “public and congressional attention on [Osama] bin Laden and Al Qaeda” prior to the attacks, it said.

Despite the language in the report, key members of the commission were complimentary toward Goss during Wednesday’s hearing.

Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, said he wanted to “make it clear” to Goss and other members that the panel’s criticisms of Congress related to “the system and not to any person.”

Commission Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said Goss had “led this committee very skillfully” in his seven years as chairman.

But Hamilton also noted that Goss served as chairman longer than perhaps only one other member in the panel’s history, underscoring the record Goss would have to defend in confirmation hearings.

The White House cited Goss’ tenure on the committee and his nine years as a CIA clandestine officer in the 1960s and early 1970s as his principal qualifications for the CIA director’s job. He would succeed George J. Tenet, who left the post last month after seven years.

Records show that the House Intelligence Committee held dozens of hearings on a range of topics in the three years before Sept. 11. Among them were hearings that focused on such matters as Iraq’s weapons activities and the CIA’s role in the mistaken U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in 1999 in the war against the former Yugoslavia. Others covered broader topics, such as counter-narcotics and computer encryption.

At least one hearing that focused on terrorism was a September 1998 session on Al Qaeda’s bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania a month earlier.

Goss stepped down as chairman of the House committee Tuesday, after his nomination was announced, but he remained a member and attended Wednesday’s hearing.

Though the Senate is expected to confirm Goss, his nomination has been criticized by Democrats, who said it was a mistake for the White House to select a partisan figure for the CIA job.

Goss, 65, has angered Democrats by departing from the nonpartisan tradition of the intelligence committee to attack Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry in recent months.

Goss’ words were turned on him Wednesday by filmmaker and Bush critic Michael Moore, who released a transcript of an interview with Goss that was taped but not used in Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

“I couldn’t get a job with the CIA today. I am not qualified,” Goss told Moore on March 3, according to the transcript of the interview. “I don’t have the language skills.... We’re looking for Arabists today. I don’t have the cultural background, probably. And I certainly don’t have the technical skills, as my children remind me every day.”

Goss was referring to the qualities the CIA now emphasizes in its efforts to recruit analysts and case officers, not the qualifications for director.